'The worst had not yet, however, been reached. On the 27th much snow fell all day, and in the evening the frost became very intense. At South Lambeth, for the four following nights, the thermometer fell to eleven, seven, six, six; and at Selborne to seven, six, ten; and on the 31st, just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on the tube of the glass, the quicksilver sank exactly to zero—a most unusual degree of cold this for the South of England.' During these four nights, the cold was so penetrating that ice formed under beds; and in the day the wind was so keen, that persons of robust constitutions could hardly endure to face it. 'The Thames was at once frozen over, both above and below bridge, that crowds ran about on the ice. The streets were now strangely encumbered with snow, which crumbled and trod dusty; and turning gray, resembled bay salt; what had fallen on the roofs was so perfectly dry that from first to last it lay twenty-six days on the houses in the city; a longer time than had been remembered by the oldest housekeepers living.'
According to all appearances rigorous weather might now have been expected for weeks to come, since every night increased in severity. 'But behold,' says White, 'without any apparent cause, on February 1, a thaw took place, and some rain followed before night, making good the observation that frosts often go off as it were at once without any gradual declension of cold. On February 2 the thaw persisted, and on the 3rd swarms of little insects were frisking and sporting in a court-yard at South Lambeth, as if they had felt no frost. Why the juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such minute beings are not frozen, is a matter of curious inquiry.'
Although it is manifest that the weather of January, 1776, was severe, yet the remarks italicised show that such weather was regarded a century ago as altogether exceptional. Again, the cold lasted only about three weeks. And it may be doubted whether in actual intensity it even equalled that which was experienced in London and the south of England generally during the first week of 1855. Certainly the evidence afforded by such remarks as I have italicised in the above-quoted passage tends more to prove that winter weather in England a hundred years hence was on the average much like winter at present, than the unusual severity of the weather during about twenty-four days in January, 1776, tends to suggest that a marked change has taken place.
Similar evidence is afforded by White's remarks respecting the severe cold of December, 1784.
As in January, 1776, so in December, 1784—a week of very wet weather heralded the approach of severe cold. 'The first week of December,' says White, 'was very wet, with the barometer very low. On the 7th, with the barometer at 28.5, came on a vast snow, which continued all that day and the next, and most part of the following night: so that by the morning of the 9th the works of men were quite overwhelmed' (there is something quite Homeric in White's use of this favourite expression), 'the lanes filled so as to be impassable, and the ground covered twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting. In the evening of the 9th the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer; we therefore hung out two, one made by Martin and one by Dolland' (probably Dollond), 'which soon began to show us what we were to expect; for by ten o'clock they fell to twenty-one, and at eleven to four, when we went to bed. On the 10th in the morning the quicksilver of Dolland's glass was down to half a degree below zero and that of Martin's, which was absurdly graduated only to four degrees above zero, sunk quite into the brass guard of the ball, so that, when the weather became most interesting, this was useless. On the 10th, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, Dolland's glass went down to one degree below zero! This strange severity of the weather made me very desirous to know what degree of cold there might be in such an exalted and near situation as Newton. We had, therefore, on the morning of the 10th, written to Mr. ----, and entreated him to hang out his thermometer, made by Adams, and to pay some attention to it, morning and evening, expecting wonderful phenomena in so elevated a region, at two hundred feet or more above my house. But, behold! on the 10th, at eleven at night, it was down only to seventeen, and the next morning at twenty-two, when mine was at ten! We were so disturbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative cold that we sent one of my glasses up, thinking that of Mr. —— must somehow be wrongly constructed. But when the instruments came to be confronted they went exactly together, so that for one night at least the cold at Newton was eighteen degrees less than at Selborne, and through the whole frost ten or twelve degrees; and indeed, when we came to observe consequences, we could readily credit this, for all my laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbutuses, cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels—and, which occasions more regret, my fine sloping laurel hedge—were scorched up, while at Newton the same trees have not lost a leaf....' One circumstance noted by White, though not bearing specially on the degree of cold which prevailed on this occasion, is very interesting. 'I must not omit to tell you,' says White, 'that during those two Siberian days my parlour cat was so electric that had a person stroked her and been properly insulated, the shock might have been given to a whole circle of people.'
White's account of this severe frost bears very significantly on the theory that our winter weather has undergone a great change. It is obvious, in the first place, that the situation of his thermometers was such that they were likely to show a low temperature as compared with the indications in other places. It is also clear that the thermometer he used was trustworthy. If it were one of Dollond's it would presumably be a good one, and I do not think that in White's time the trick of marking inferior instruments with the name Dolland had come into vogue. But in any case Adams's scientific instruments were excellent; and, as the account shows, the thermometer used by White indicated the same temperature as Adams's. Now, the lowest temperature recorded was only one degree below zero; and that this was altogether exceptional is shown not only by what White says in the passage I have quoted, but also by his remarking a little later that this frost 'may be allowed, from its effects, to have exceeded any since 1739-40.' Even this is not all. It would certainly prove beyond dispute that our winters were not milder than those of a century ago; for a greater degree of cold than that recorded by White in December, 1784, has been more than once experienced in the same part of England during the last forty years. But it seems from a statement in Miller's 'Gardener's Dictionary,' that the Portugal laurels were untouched in the great frost of 1739-40, which would show that the frost of 1784 was more severe and destructive than that of 1739-40. If this were really so, the frost of 1784 was the severest (though owing to its short duration it did not produce the most remarkable effects in the country at large) of any during the periods noted between the years 1709 and 1788. On the Continent, the frost of December, 1788, was more severe in some places, though rather less severe at Paris, than that of 1709; but I do not know of any records which would enable us to make a direct comparison between the cold in 1709, 1784, and 1788, at any given place in Great Britain.
It will be well now to take a wider survey and consider some of the most severe winters experienced in Europe generally.
The winter of 1544 was remarkably severe all over Europe. In Flanders, according to Mézerai, wine froze in casks, and was sold in blocks by the pound weight. The winter of 1608 was also very severe. In the winter of 1709 the thermometer at the Paris Observatory recorded a cold of nearly ten degrees below zero.
Passing over the winter of 1776, of whose effects in England we have learned enough to enable us to judge how severely it must have been felt in those continental countries where the winter is always more severe than with us, we come to the severe winter of 1788-89.
We have seen that in England hard frost began on November 22 and continued till January 13. In France (or rather at Paris) the frost began three days later, but the thaw began on the same day, January 13. There was no intermission except on Christmas Day, when it did not freeze. In the great canal at Versailles the ice was two feet thick. 'The water also froze,' says Flammarion, 'in several very deep wells, and wine became congealed in cellars. The Seine began to freeze as early as November 26, and for several days its course was impeded, the breaking up of the ice not taking place until January 20 (1789). The lowest temperature observed at Paris was seven degrees below zero, on December 31. The frost was equally severe in other parts of France and throughout Europe. The Rhone was quite frozen over at Lyons, the Garonne at Toulouse, and at Marseilles the sides of the docks were covered with ice. Upon the shores of the Atlantic the sea was frozen to a distance of several leagues. The ice upon the Rhine was so thick that loaded wagons were able to cross it. The Elbe was covered with ice, and also bore up heavy carts. The harbour at Ostend was frozen so hard that people could cross it on horseback; the sea was congealed to a distance of four leagues from the exterior fortifications, and no vessel could approach the harbour.'